20 Foods to Eat When You're So Over NYE

We’re offering up recipes for every last last second of 2014. So roll up your apron sleeves, funseekers. It’s going to be a wild ride.

By
Pie Squared

That great big ball in the middle of Times Square is getting ready for its annual fall.

That’s kind of an analogy for how the typical New Year’s Eve seems to go. Starting with the highest expectations, it’s the night that’s most ripe for a quick trip into hecksville. Fortunately, we’re offering up recipes for every last last second of 2014. So roll up your apron sleeves, funseekers. It’s going to be a wild ride.

Phase 1: Ready, set, rock-and-roll. Whip these up to get the party started with delicious cocktails and delectable desserts. Because that’s what’s for dinner, right?

Don’t waste valuable stomach space on non-celebratory foods. Fresh fruit? Save that for the New Year’s Resolutions – tonight is about excess. As in the excessive bliss of biting into a delicious champagne treat.

Phase 2: You’re dressed, you’re pumped, and you’re hungry. And when it’s the last meal of the year, you’re gonna do it up right. Bring on the maitre d’ – or just save a bundle and go gourmet yourself.

One of two paths will reveal themselves soon: The path that leads to a night you’ll never forget (assuming you remember anything), or the journey that’s a one-way ticket to I Hate Myselfville. Fortunately, these dishes take you in either direction, equally deliciously.

No matter how you slice it, it’s a creamy, luscious, so-good, no-bake way to say “There’s nobody else I’d rather while away the waning hours of December with”. Even if you’re pretty much saying it to yourself.

Spoonful after spoonful of melty made-by-you white chocolate, whipped within an inch of its life and dusted with (edible) glittery fairy dust so all your deepest wishes will come true at midnight. Yep, totally happening.

Straight-up bubbly is fine, but when you’ve got the whole rest of the year left (all 90ish minutes or whatevs), you gotta mix things up. Like citrus liqueur turning champagne into a magical potion of awesomeness.

Jello shots? Please. It’s NYT, for crying in your noisemaker, so up your game and craft these artisan jelly shots with fresh lemon, berry liqueur and a haute-stuff attitude.

Phase 4: Midnight has passed, and it was less mahvelous, more meh. That hottie you sidled up to for the stroke-of-midnight kiss... didn’t. You spilled your glass of champagne halfway through the toast. All your acquaintances paired up and guess who’s the odd one out? And... let’s just eat all the things already.

Any one of the ingredients is a survival tool in itself. But mashed up into awesome bars that deliver pretzels, bacon, chips, chocolate, peanut butter, and caramel into your mouth ALL AT ONCE? Suck it, NYE. We’ve found something better.

First you fry the bacon. Then you fry the rest of the stuff in the bacon fat. Then you roll it all up in a neat little package. Which you then fry in the remaining bacon fat. There’s a theme going here...

What if you weren’t slowed down by having to eat donut holes one at a time? And could eat them, oh, I don’t know, by the forkful? And then there was a glaze on them? And it was all warm and comforting because they got baked into an actual pie crust? This is your pie. This is your time. Happy 2015!